Difference between revisions of "Brief survey of existing payment services"

(Created page with "Debit payments are possible where an account is prefilled and drawn down for each transaction. The account could be your bank account, or it could be a separate account that you …")

Revision as of 16:18, 7 February 2013

Debit payments are possible where an account is prefilled and drawn down for each transaction. The account could be your bank account, or it could be a separate account that you fill with you regular credit or debit card. Another approach aggregates your transactions subject to some overall limit and requires you to settle in full or in part at the end of the month.

please add to this list and amend as appropriate

Western Union - person to person transfers settled online through a user's debit or credit card or through cash payments at Western Union outlets

PayPal - online payment service settled through a user's debit or credit card

Bitcoin - a decentralized electronic cash system based upon cryptographic tokens with a peer to peer solution for managing anonymous transactions and minting tokens. Bitcoin is the first digital currency that avoids the need for trusted intermediaries to prevent double spending. This makes it hard to regulate, and Bitcoin has gained notoriety through its use for shady transactions. Arstechnica report: Bitcoin: inside the encrypted, peer-to-peer digital currency.

Some more experimental approaches:

Flattr - prepay service for making payments to sites displaying Flattr button, where your monthly spend is divided amongst the sites where you clicked the button

IFEX - protocol designed to facilitate the negotiation of financial transactions between internet-based financial endpoints

Ripple - credit based solution where commitments to pay ("IOUs") are exchanged along trust chains

Opentabs - credit based solution involving settlements of cryptographically signed open tabs ("IOUs")

webinos payment API from the webinos research project. It is not linked to a specific payment service provider and is designed to be sufficiently generic to be mapable to various payment services like GSMA OneAPI, BlueVia, Android Payment API or PayPal.